From Blissfully Blind to Sadly Seeing

Meagan Webb

        When I was four years old, things appeared so simple, so wonderful.  Dogs were adorably soft, and all flowers were beautiful, waiting to be plucked.  There were little yellow flowers and dandelions, upon which wishes were made as they were blown and scattered with the wind.  The magic behind finding a four leaf clover, on that hill, behind preschool, after searching day after day, was indescribable.  The clouds were amazingly soft, marshmallow-like things, but they were more!  They were pictures.  Each one was fascinating, and combined they created an epic tale strewn across the sky.  And puddles in the parking lot were tremendously fun to jump in; we didn’t care if we got wet. At dusk on a warm summer’s day, fireflies surrounded us as they lit up our world.  And we would run, trying to catch them, laughing in delight when we succeeded.  Then we let them go with a whispered wish, hoping it would come true.  “Twinkle twinkle little star….” –we would say as we wished upon the lights in the night sky.  Because when you’re four, you know that wishes always come true, and that magic is everywhere, if only we look for it.

        When I was eight years old, these same things changed.  We realized that when we picked a flower, it dies soon after and its beauty is lost.  Dogs, whilst adorable, could be dangerous as well.  They could be really big, just as tall as me!  One time, a dog was too excited and it knocked me down onto the ground, and it hurt!  We learned that dandelions were just pests to a garden; we shouldn’t blow them and make a wish, because doing so just allows more weeds to grow.  Where before they were beautiful flowers, we learned they were just ugly, poisonous weeds.  The clouds were no longer fluffy white marshmallows in the sky; they were simply the condensation stage of the water cycle, where all the rain comes from.  But that wasn’t bad; the rain was still an adventure.  My brother and I—we would race from window to window and peer out onto the storm, filled with excitement.  Eagerly we watched as the ditch flooded and the trees were bent over by the wind; the universe felt alive.  But we did not dare to go outside; we didn’t want to get wet.  We still caught fireflies, and we went further—we tried to keep them as pets!  We got a vacant jelly jar apiece, filled it with leaves and grass, and then put the fireflies in the jars, creating special nightlights which we set by our bedsides.  But when we woke up, the fireflies were dead; we did not understand why.  We saw that the stars glittered magically, and we wanted to just reach out and touch them—but we couldn’t; we wished on them instead.  Soon we learned that we were supposed to only wish on shooting stars or the first star in the night sky.  We thought that was why our wishes did not come true in the past; we were doing it wrong.  At eight, we still believed our wishes could come true, but we learned that often they did not.  We still believed that magic existed in the world, but it was becoming exceedingly harder to find.

        Nowadays, I know the truth.  Well, most of it at least; much more than I knew in years past.  Flowers are still beautiful, I suppose, but they are never perfect; there is always a leaf out of place or a petal tinged with black as it starts to die or wilt.  We know that dandelions are weeds, but we don’t really care anymore; we don’t go outside much anyways.  Clouds just bring the rain, and it is tremendously inconvenient if we have to go anywhere.  We don’t catch fireflies anymore, but we do know why they died—we suffocated them.  I suppose they were never ours to keep in the first place.  Perhaps that is why they say “If you love someone, let them go”—because if you keep anyone or anything captive to you, then the lack of freedom will suffocate them as well.  We know what stars really are now: they are large spheres of hydrogen and helium gas, just like the sun.  The stars can not, should not, be touched—because we know that they will only burn us, incinerating us until nothing is left.  Most importantly, we learned that wishes don’t come true.  We no longer wish upon the stars, or the dandelions, or the fireflies.  Sometimes we wish on a birthday candle, if only for tradition’s sake, but we never expect it to come true; we know better now.  The magic is dead, lost forever…… is the magic really dead, though, since it never truly existed in the first place?

        People say that ignorance is bliss; I am inclined to agree with them.  Small children are naïve: they are blissfully blind to the world around them.  As we age, we view things differently, which isn’t necessarily a good thing.  Everything loses the magic it once held; it is all merely tricks, like smokes and mirrors at a magician’s show.  Our sense of wonder is scattered and torn into unrecognizable pieces by the winds of time, like a dandelion.  And, thus, we all go from blissfully blind children to sadly-seeing adults.